He’s the product of a wealthy industrialist family from Guadalajara that built its fortune securing contracts with the Mexican federal government.

Jose Susumo Azano Matsura, the foreign national whose money sparked a probe of illegal donations to San Diego political campaigns, studied engineering and architecture, then branched out on his own.

Azano, 48, moves easily between Mexico and the Coronado strand, where he owns an impressive waterfront home on Green Turtle Road. He owns property and companies on both sides of the border. Newspaper photos in Mexico have shown him enjoying nightlife and mingling with celebrities.

His main brush with publicity in San Diego stemmed from a high-profile fight he picked in 2008 with the Fortune 500 company that owns San Diego Gas & Electric.

Beyond that litigation, which is still being disputed in courts in Mexico and the United States, Azano has managed to keep a relatively low profile — at least until Tuesday.

That’s when federal prosecutors released a 15-page complaint alleging that an unnamed foreign national spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money to illegally influence San Diego elections.

The document accused Washington D.C.-based elections consultant Ravneet Singh and retired San Diego police detective Ernesto Encinas of funneling foreign money into a series of San Diego political campaigns.

Political candidates in the United States are not permitted to accept contributions from foreign companies or citizens.

While the federal complaint does not name Azano, it contains enough information to identify him. It says the foreign national infused more than $500,000 into the San Diego mayoral race in 2012 and other campaigns, mostly through a straw donor.

According to the complaint, the ex-officer funneling the contributions wanted San Diego Police Chief Bill Lansdowne fired, and his successor to be someone he approved.

Azano’s whereabouts this week are unclear; he could not be reached for comment. Federal agents raided his Coronado Cays home on Wednesday.

Press reports and searches of online databases and websites show Azano is involved with numerous companies in Mexico and the United States, some of which are now defunct.

U-T San Diego reported in 2011 that Azano was the financial backer behind Ramon Eugenio Sanchez Ritchie, a rancher from Baja California who claimed he was forcibly removed from his property after Sempra Energy executives bribed Mexican officials for permission to build a liquefied natural gas plant on the land.

Azano’s involvement in the Costa Azul terminal was the subject of conversations on national security and economic security between former President Vicente Calderón and Barack Obama, Mexican media reported.

Taking office, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto was reportedly briefed in detail on the dispute at the natural gas terminal.

The FBI had discussions with Sempra about possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act — which prohibits U.S. firms from paying foreign officials — after U-T Watchdog published a 2010 series about the dispute.

U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy closed her review with no enforcement action in June 2011, the newspaper reported in January 2012.

Azano backed Sanchez Ritchie in the long-running lawsuit in Mexico.

According to an 8-page contract obtained by U-T Watchdog and reported in 2011, Azano agreed to finance the suit in exchange for 55 percent of any money recovered and 66 percent of land returned to Sanchez Ritchie.

Late last year, a judge in Mexico ruled that the property belongs to Sanchez Ritchie but the legal fight continues.

In the agreement with Sanchez Ritchie, Azano declares that “he is an individual, of Mexican citizenship” with “the legal capacity and financial solvency” to meet the terms of the agreement.

That declaration may prove significant.

In 2012, San Diego CityBeat reported that a company owned by Azano — Airsam N492RM LLC — donated $100,000 to a political action committee supporting District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis’ mayoral run.

That report quoted Republican political strategist Kevin Spillane, who managed fund-raising and spending for the committee, saying the donations were legal because Airsam was based in the U.S. and Azano had a green card. The federal complaint this week referenced the story, but Azano never had a green card.

Airsam N492RM was incorporated in Delaware in March 2010.

According to the California Secretary of State, the company is based in San Diego on Lancaster Point Way, just east of Brown Field. The registered agent is Abel Garcia Davila and the manager is Azano.

The property is owned by Management Security Adviser LLC, another company owned by Azano whose registered agent is Abel Garcia Davila, state records show.

Garcia Davila could not be reached for comment.

The family fortune controlled by Azano Matsura and his father, José Susumo Azano Moritani, is tied to construction and security technology companies.

Mexican media have described how the clan quietly leveraged political connections over decades to grow its business, first in the state of Jalisco and later in the Mexican capital and other states, including Baja California.

The oldest business in the Azano Group portfolio is TEI Construcción, which counts three state governments, universities, a public pension fund and Mexico’s national affordable housing agency among its clients. TEI has also worked for American multinationals like AT&T and Nissan.

Very little public information exists about companies Azano owns in San Diego and Los Angeles. Some are defunct; others have almost no public profile.

Azano’s best-known company in Mexico is Security Tracking Devices SA de CV, a Jalisco business that designs and installs computer security products.

More recently, Azano was linked to government contracts to provide cell phone and radio tracking equipment to Mexico’s military.

The contracts with Security Tracking Devices were flagged for irregularities and concerns of corruption in 2011 by central government auditors, according to several Mexican media reports.